Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Traveling and CIO

As far as vacations go, my children have always slept and do sleep just as well away from home as he does at home. Neither have cried. It hasn't been an issue. Part of the reason for that is that I do my best to stay home during the heat of CIO training. When we first started CIO with Brayden, we would travel and not do CIO while we were gone and then come back and try to press forward. Once I realized what we were doing to him, we put a hold on all trips until he was trained. I actually planned Kaitlyn's due date to be at a time of year I knew we could stay home for 8 weeks following her birth to get her trained. If I were in the middle of sleep training, I would likely avoid sleeping over somewhere because I would want to get things down and not disrupt the process.

However, not all people can or want to put traveling on hold for 8 weeks. If my family needed or really wanted to sleep away from home during sleep training, I wouldn't do CIO at our destination unless the baby could be in a quiet place and in a familiar bed. And I definitely wouldn't do it at night, out of respect for those you are visiting. If baby woke in the night I would feed and put back to bed, not CIO. This situation would be an exception to your normal routine.

If you do travel during CIO training, your baby will likely get off. When you get home, it will likely feel like you have regressed a couple of weeks in your training. Those weeks should be made up faster than it took originally. You also will likely have a few really bad days as your baby protests the change. Or course, your child might surprise you. Both of mine have been quite resilient and bounce back quickly after disruptions--often times going straight back without any adjustment. That is, however, after we have completed training, not during training.

Once you get sleep training down, things like traveling usually won't disrupt your child very much and sleep can still happen as usual. Keep in mind that when I say 8 weeks, that is the time it took for my children to get from not knowing how to put themselves to sleep to the point of not crying at all before naps or bedtime. It seems to take about 2 solid weeks of consistency for things to get more manageable, then 4 weeks total for them to be pretty good. Things just get better from there, and by 8 weeks of training, baby should be quite proficient at his new skill. Good luck in your training and travels!

Lindse94 said...Glad to find this article today as I am starting CIO with my 9 month old tonight. We have tried before, but have a second home near my family and there has been a greta deal of inconsistency. Of course I am travelling in two weeks! He has done CIO at all naps and bedtime for many months, but the night waking has become a major issue. He has gone from having a feed and going right back to sleep to screaming for hours :(. Wish me luck!April 10, 2008 8:41 AM Plowmanators said...Good luck!April 10, 2008 1:39 PM